Nauvoo editions

There were two editions of the Book of Mormon that Joseph Smith revised in Nauvoo. Both of them contain the cover page that states:

Translated by Joseph Smith

and

Carefully revised by the translator

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These statements refute the claims by SITH sayers (proponents of the "stone-in-the-hat" narrative that was published in Mormonism Unvailed in 1834 and revived in recent years by certain LDS scholars). The SITH sayers insist that Joseph did not really translate the engravings on the plates as he was commanded to do.

"you shall translate the engravings which are on the plates of Nephi..."

(Doctrine and Covenants 10:41)

Yet here Joseph not only identifies himself as the translator, he also explains that he "carefully revised" the text. If the text actually came from the "stone in the hat" instead, Joseph would not have any basis for "revising" the text. 

Nevertheless, prominent LDS scholars continue to claim that Joseph (and Oliver) deliberately misled everyone about the translation process. 

See, e.g., https://www.ldshistoricalnarratives.com/2026/04/thank-you-royal-skousen.html

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John Hajicek displayed originals of the two editions:

John Hajicek 

Sodonerstp44ht5g13881h543luia1l14al1l5c0882t4h9f7h1c77f13lu7 ·

Two Nauvoo editions of the revised version of the Book of Mormon, 1840 and 1842. One printed by Joseph Smith and one printed by his brother Don Carlos Smith.

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Grok explains:

The 1840 and 1842 printings are not fully separate editions but closely related impressions of the same third major American edition of the Book of Mormon.

Background

• The 1840 edition (third edition overall) was printed in Cincinnati, Ohio, by Shepard and Stearns for Ebenezer Robinson and Don Carlos Smith. Joseph Smith personally reviewed and revised the text (building on his 1837 work), making grammatical improvements, restorations from the printer’s manuscript, and some clarifications. Stereotype plates (metal printing plates) were created from this typesetting.
• These plates were shipped to Nauvoo, Illinois, where further impressions (print runs) were made in 1840–1842 using the same plates.

Key Differences

The 1842 printing (sometimes called the fourth impression or Nauvoo 1842 issue) was a small run (around 640 copies) from the same stereotype plates as the 1840 edition, so the core text is virtually identical. The main differences are limited to the title page and minor production details:

• Title page updates:
  • Date changed from 1840 to 1842.
  • "Joseph Smith, Junior" changed to "Joseph Smith" (dropping "Jr.") because Joseph Smith Sr. had died in 1840, and it was no longer necessary to distinguish father from son. (This change was later reversed in subsequent editions for clarity regarding the Eight Witnesses statement.)
• Print quantity and rarity: The 1842 run was much smaller and is considered quite rare today.
• Possible minor corrections: Joseph Smith continued light revisions into early 1842 (e.g., reading and correcting plates for errors that "escaped notice"). Any such changes would appear only in the 1842 impression, but they were limited and not extensive.

Summary Table

Aspect	1840 Edition (Cincinnati/Nauvoo)	1842 Impression (Nauvoo)
Text/Content	Joseph Smith's revisions (e.g., "white" → "pure" in 2 Nephi 30:6)	Same as 1840 (same plates)
Title Page Date	1840	1842
Joseph Smith Attribution	"Joseph Smith, Junior"	"Joseph Smith" (Jr. dropped)
Print Run	Larger (thousands across impressions)	Small (~640 copies)
Significance	Last major revision supervised by Joseph Smith	Final Nauvoo-era printing from 1840 plates

In short, if you compare the interiors side-by-side, they are essentially the same book. The 1842 version is best understood as a reprint/impression with a refreshed title page rather than a new edited edition. Later LDS editions followed other lineages (e.g., the 1841 British edition followed the 1837 text more closely), which is why some 1840 changes were temporarily "lost" until the 1981 edition restored them.

These details come from historical scholarship on Book of Mormon printing (BYU Studies, Joseph Smith Papers project, etc.). Rare original copies are collector items today.

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Latter-Day Saints messages

eSotndsrpo29h8Mda: gr1u5ealahlttmc48u1gY13sc1f0 e7tymm a2t1A ·

Changes to the Book of Mormon

In 1829, Egbert B. Grandin’s staff in Palmyra, New York, began production on printing the Book of Mormon. For first editions of books, printers at the time usually received handwritten manuscripts from authors and supplied editorial changes like punctuation, spelling, and grammar while setting the type. For this project, Joseph Smith’s assistant and scribe, Oliver Cowdery, created a copy of the original manuscript for the typesetter, John Gilbert, to use. This “printer’s manuscript,” like the original, contained very little punctuation and some inconsistencies in spelling. The printer’s manuscript also contained minor discrepancies relative to the original manuscript. In typesetting the book, Gilbert supplied punctuation and paragraph divisions. The first edition of the Book of Mormon had no verse numbering.

Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery prepared a second edition in 1837. Their approach in updating the Book of Mormon resembled how publishers of the Bible at the time improved editions for English readers. Publishers and readers commonly understood that production errors could creep into the typesetting process for any book, so publishers often provided prefaces assuring readers of their efforts to catch and repair any inconsistencies noticed in earlier editions. Over two months in 1837, Joseph and Oliver approached the first edition of the Book of Mormon with similar intentions, introducing over a thousand minor corrections in the second edition as well as a few important clarifications. For instance, they adjusted references about Jesus in 1 Nephi rendered in the manuscripts and 1830 edition as “the mother of God,” “the Eternal Father,” and “the Everlasting God” to “the mother of the Son of God,” “the Son of the Eternal Father,” and “the Son of the everlasting God,” respectively. Joseph and Oliver’s preface stated, “Individuals acquainted with book printing, are aware of the numerous typographical errors which always occur in manuscript editions. [This text] has been carefully re-examined and compared with the original manuscripts, by elder Joseph Smith, Jr. the translator of the book of Mormon, assisted by the present printer, brother O. Cowdery.”

The last edition of the Book of Mormon supervised by Joseph Smith was the third edition published in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1840. The work of the third edition began with Ebenezer Robinson, who used a copy of the second edition with revisions marked in pencil by Joseph Smith. One important change in the third edition corrected the language describing Nephites as a “white and delightsome people” to a “pure and delightsome people.” Because some future editions of the Book of Mormon based their text on the second edition of 1837, uncorrected verbiage persisted until the 1981 edition reverted the text to Joseph Smith’s 1840 correction. Robinson used stereotype plates in preparing the third edition for print. This technology allowed for multiple reprintings, a first for the Book of Mormon. With stereotyped plates in hand, Joseph Smith treated the book as more or less secure for the foreseeable future, and he deposited the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon in a cornerstone of the Nauvoo House in 1841.

Since the third edition in 1840, other editions and dozens of reprintings based on the 1837 and the 1841 European editions introduced minor changes to the Book of Mormon. The 1879 edition prepared by Orson Pratt featured shorter chapters and numbered verses that have remained the standard through all subsequent editions. The 1920 edition prepared by the Scriptures Committee of the Church, a group of five Apostles chaired by George F. Richards, standardized the titles of books (like Third Nephi and Fourth Nephi) within the Book of Mormon, divided the text into a two-column layout, and added chapter summaries and a pronunciation guide.

Despite its many cross-references, the 1920 edition was still typeset separately from English editions of the Bible. In the 1970s, the Scriptures Publication Committee chaired by Elder Thomas S. Monson launched a review of the Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price to produce a complete edition of the standard works. The committee consulted the original and printer’s manuscripts and previous editions of the Book of Mormon to identify and track typographical and semantic variants. Some human errors were corrected, like straight having been confused for strait (words with the same sound but with different meanings), and formation in the printer’s manuscript having been typeset as foundation in 1 Nephi 13. The committee also rediscovered and incorporated Joseph Smith’s revisions in the 1840 edition. The 1981 edition introduced a new layout across the standard works and featured updated cross-references, chapter headings, and reference materials.

Both scriptures committees in 1920 and in the 1970s consulted the work of scholars who had examined source texts and printed editions available in their respective times. Such scholarship accelerated in 1988 with the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project, eventually headed by Royal Skousen, a professor of linguistics and English language at Brigham Young University. Skousen’s work to identify all changes across Book of Mormon texts, whether editorial or accidental, unearthed scribal patterns in the manuscripts and variants across printed editions, which led to a flowering of scholarship on the text of the Book of Mormon. In 2001, the Joseph Smith Papers Project began collecting and presenting all of Joseph Smith’s surviving papers, including his contributions to the Book of Mormon. The modern archival work and documentary editing practices of this project furthered the study of the Book of Mormon and its history, making available yet more documentation of changes to the Book of Mormon than before.

The physical deterioration of the English printing masters of the 1981 edition prompted urgent production of a new edition. The resulting 2013 edition took the occasion to correct lingering typographical inconsistencies, like standardizing instances of first-born to firstborn in 2 Nephi 2, 4, and 24, and correcting minor typographical errors like becoming as Gods to becoming as gods in Alma 12:31 and the peoples’ to the people’s in Helaman 13:17.

Emerging digital publishing technologies also brought new formats for digital publication. Software offered readers keyword-searching, reference links, and scripture-marking tools, as well as over a hundred language options. In 2022, the Book of Mormon app further enhanced digital functionality, linking the text to multimedia and other digital content and providing instant sharing capabilities.

click to enlarge

Thank you Royal Skousen

In the ongoing pursuit of clarity, charity and understanding, today we'll look at a post from one of my other blogs regarding the clarity brought by Royal Skousen to the conversation about the origin of the Book of Mormon. Most of this post is adapted from that one.

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A priority in our day is the elimination of contention. In the April 2026 General Conference, President Oaks said,

My brothers and sisters, as followers of Christ, let us follow Him by forgoing contention and by using the language and methods of peacemakers.

My blog nomorecontention.com has been discussing this topic since April 2023.

Contention arises from the compulsion people feel to have others agree with them, whether by persuasion, coercion, compulsion, or any other means. An antidote is to pursue instead these three values: clarity, charity and understanding.

Forgoing contention through apathy does not make peace. It does not foster unity. Instead, it represses resentments and misunderstandings, enabling them to accumulate.

Clarity is the predicate or foundation for unity. And, because so much contention arises from our LDS academics, their theories, and their efforts to obtain acceptance of their theories, we should all thank Royal Skousen for stating the obvious about the implications of SITH (the stone-in-the-hat narrative about the origin of the Book of Mormon).

The unity I refer to is not a unity of belief, but 

(i) unity in knowledge (clarity), 

(ii) unity in charity (love and good faith), and 

(iii) unity in understanding (acceptance and appreciation for differences without a compulsion to have everyone think the same).

Unity among Latter-day Saints on the questions of the origin and setting of the Book of Mormon will naturally follow once everyone recognizes that their opinions are based on their respective assumptions about whether Joseph and Oliver told the truth. 

We can all be faithful, productive, harmonious Latter-day Saints when we accept the reality that some of us accept what Joseph and Oliver taught, while others reject what they taught, without insisting everyone must do one or the other.

IOW, unity through diversity.

But for that to happen, we must all be crystal clear about the facts and their implications. And we must fully own our respective beliefs without trying to enforce our own through censorship, obfuscation, and sophistry.

In Part Seven of his series The History of the Text of the Book of Mormon, Brother Skousen makes plain this reality: everyone who teaches SITH is also teaching that Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery deliberately misled everyone about the origin of the Book of Mormon.

Skousen writes, 

"Joseph Smith’s claim that he used the Urim and Thummim is only partially true; and Oliver Cowdery’s statements that Joseph used the original instrument while he, Oliver, was the scribe appear to be intentionally misleading."

(click to enlarge)

While this point has been obvious to those of us who still believe what Joseph and Oliver taught about the origin and setting of the Book of Mormon, the various scholars who promote SITH have managed to skirt the issue by simply not telling their followers what Joseph and Oliver taught.

For example, the LDS scholars who wrote Saints (vol. 1), the Gospel Topics Essay on Book of Mormon Translation, innumerable articles, commentaries, videos, podcasts, etc., have carefully avoided Brother Skousen's point by simply omitting what Joseph and Oliver taught about the origin of the Book of Mormon.

But Brother Skousen has "unvailed" the truth about SITH.

To be clear, I completely disagree with Brother Skousen's conclusion, which is based not on facts per se, but instead on a series assumptions and inferences he makes. 

To his credit, he does explain some of his assumptions and inferences. But unfortunately he leaves others unstated. 

We've discussed some examples on this blog, such as here 

https://www.ldshistoricalnarratives.com/2025/03/royal-skousens-excerpt-technique.html

and here

https://www.ldshistoricalnarratives.com/2024/12/creating-narrative-with-selective.html.

The key point is that every Latter-day Saint should recognize that Brother Skousen's conclusion about Joseph and Oliver intentionally misleading everyone necessarily follows from the SITH narrative.

That's why E.D. Howe spelled it out in his 1834 anti-Mormon book titled Mormonism Unvailed in the first place. Howe sought to discredit Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery by making the same argument Skousen and other SITH scholars are making today.

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On this blog we have several articles that explain the SITH problem.

https://www.ldshistoricalnarratives.com/p/the-sith-problem-1829-2024.html

https://www.ldshistoricalnarratives.com/p/joseph-smith-papers-awesome-except-for.html

https://www.ldshistoricalnarratives.com/p/joseph-smith-papers-sources-no-sith-or.html

We all agree that people can have different views. Multiple working hypotheses are part of life and should be easy to accept and understand in the spirit of charity, but this only works in a climate of clarity and openness.

Let's all work together to identify facts and separate them from assumptions, inferences and theories, so that each of the multiple working hypotheses can be fairly and accurately evaluated as people make their own informed decisions.

This is the FAITH model of analysis.

Reading

 

G. K. Chesterton explains that reading gives a man more lives than he was born with:

“A man who has read a thousand books is armed for life; a man who has read none is easy prey. 

The man who has read a thousand books has lived a thousand lives. He has seen cities he has never visited, spoken to men who died centuries ago, and walked in worlds that no longer exist. 

Reading does not merely inform him; it enlarges him. It stretches the boundaries of his own experience until he becomes something more than himself.”

Writing, then and now

Dumbing down of language: compare Oliver Cowdery's Letter VII to modern writing.

Culture Explorer

@CultureExploreX

·

11h

For most of history, language was trained through books, sermons, letters, and long conversation. People grew up hearing scripture, poetry, speeches, and literature. Their vocabulary expanded because their mental diet demanded it. Now language is trained by algorithms that reward speed and reaction. Short posts have replaced letters. Memes have replaced arguments. People will point to your origin rather than debate your point. Nor can they tolerate a dissenting view. All of it is done on purpose because our leaders want followers and loyalists not those who would ask or challenge. So the language shrinks. And when language shrinks, something deeper shrinks with it. Because a civilization can only think as clearly as the words it still remembers how to use.

One thing you notice when you read pretty much anything written more than 100 years ago is just how impoverished and bland and limited our language has become. People spoke and wrote in a kind of effortlessly rich and descriptive way that almost no one does today. On this site a lot of people write almost exclusively in cliches and internet lingo. A lot of people speak like that too. The language contracts, our conversational vocabulary shrinks more and more over time. And the more limited we become in our language, the more limited we are in our thinking.

It’s not just the classic authors. I mean read any random letter from any random Civil War soldier writing to his mother or wife back home. Even if the spelling was bad, the writing is just kind of evocative and interesting in a way that nobody communicates today. I read one in a book that was like “As I write this I’m sitting on a narrow dusty road in the cool shade of a magnolia tree which blossoms in vibrant hues of pink and white,” or something along those lines. Paraphrasing but the point is that you read it and immediately know it must have been written 150 years ago because nobody would casually write in such a descriptive way today. We don’t paint pictures with words anymore. And I find that really sad.

https://x.com/MattWalshBlog/status/2028938020414484504?s=20

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Excerpt from Letter VII:

You have, no doubt, as well as myself, frequently heard those who do not pretend to an “experimental” belief in the Lord Jesus, say, with those who do, that, (to use a familiar phrase,) “any tune can be played upon the bible:”—What is here meant to be conveyed, I suppose, is, that proof can be adduced from that volume, to support as many different systems as men please to choose: one saying this is the way, and the other, this is the way, while the third says, that it is all false, and that he can “play this tune upon it.” If this is so, alas for our condition: admit this to be the case, and either wicked and designing men have taken from it those plain and easy items, or it never came from Deity, if that Being is perfect and consistent in his ways.

But although I am ready to admit that men, in previous generations, have, with polluted hands and corrupt hearts, taken from the sacred oracles many precious items which were plain of comprehension, for the main purpose of building themselves up in the trifling things of this world, yet, when it is carefully examined, a straight forward consistency will be found, sufficient to check the vicious heart of man and teach him to revere a word so precious, handed down to us from our fathers, teaching us that by faith we can approach the same benevolent Being, and receive for ourselves a sure word of prophecy, which will serve as a light in a dark place, to lead to those   things within the vail, where peace, righteousness and harmony, in one uninterrupted round, feast the inhabitants of those blissful regions in endless day.

Scarce can the reflecting mind be brought to contemplate these scenes, without asking, for whom are they held in reserve, and by whom are they to be enjoyed? Have we an interest there? Do our fathers, who have waded through affliction and adversity, who have been cast out from the society of this world, whose tears have, times without number, watered their furrowed face, while mourning over the corruption of their fellowmen, an inheritance in those mansions? If so, can they without us be made perfect? Will their joy be full till we rest with them? And is their efficacy and virtue sufficient, in the blood of a Savior, who groaned upon Calvary’s summit, to expiate our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness? I trust, that as individuals acquainted with the gospel, through repentance, baptism and keeping the commandments of that same Lord, we shall eventually, be brought to partake in the fulness of that which we now only participate—the full enjoyment of the presence of our Lord. Happy indeed, will be that hour to all the saints, and above all to be desired, (for it never ends) when men will again mingle praise with those who do always behold the face of our Father who is in heaven.

(Messenger and Advocate I.10:155 ¶6–156 ¶2)

https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1834-1836/84